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Thursday, September 27, 2018

Another world

“Wild Pacific”
(also called “South Pacific” in some jurisdictions) is a fascinating
documentary series about animal and plant life in the South Pacific and Hawaii.
New Guinea, New Zealand, the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia and Polynesia are
featured (including Easter Island).

If you like
weird stuff, this is definitely for you! How about real footage of large sharks
gathered to eat young albatrosses which are learning how to fly? Apparently an
annual spectacle on a certain reef in the Pacific. Meanwhile on New Zealand,
you can run into penguins in the forest. Another island features enormous crabs
living in the palm trees. The poor cat Tibbles, who supposedly exterminated an
entire species of songbird, is mentioned in one episode, although it seems
feral cats had decimated the population of Lyall´s Wren already before his
arrival at Stephens Island. Also featured are underwater volcanoes and
above-water ones at Hawaii. Somewhat surprisingly, “Wild Pacific” promotes the
idea that the culture at Easter Island might have been destroyed by rats.

One problem with
this series is that most episodes tend to depict the Pacific as some kind of
pristine paradise, which it definitely isn´t. This is particularly galling when
discussing Hawaii, “the most isolated island chain in the world”. Yeah, except
for Honolulu and the little detail that Hawaii is the 50th state of
the Union! Nothing about the civil war at Bougainville, the near-civil war at
New Caledonia, the nuclear tests at Mururoa, the military coup at Fiji, you get
the picture. Instead, we are shown happy natives living in fundamental harmony
with nature. Only in the last episode do we get some insight into the
environmental problems besetting the region, such as overfishing, coral death
and climate change threatening to wipe out entire island nations.

That being said,
“Wild (or South) Pacific” is well worth watching, and I therefore give it five
stars out of five. And yes, I´m still eating tuna…